Clicks Produced at the Beginning of the Responses to Questions

Abstract

This study focuses on nonverbal clicks produced at the beginning of responses to questions. An analysis of clicks using conversation analysis found that clicks are mainly used in the following three situations: 1) there is inappropriate content in the previous question; 2) there is a lack of strong evidence to support the speaker’s answer to the previous question; and 3) the answer to the question requires more than one TCU. From this, we can see that clicks are used to indicate difficulty in answering the previous question in a straightforward manner.